Happiness Everywhere

Category: Life in Happiness

The people behind the answers: days in the life, meetups, and what it’s like to do this work at Automattic.

  • Working as a nomad

    Working as a nomad

    Nomad, remote worker, digital nomad, location independent – there are many different terms for it nowadays! Whatever you want to call it, it’s the lifestyle I lead and I am lucky enough that as a Happiness Engineer with Automattic I’m able to work from anywhere!

    My name is Anna, and you can get to know me better by checking out my blog at meander.co.nz

    Over the past 4 years, I’ve lived, worked, and traveled to 33 different countries – I started out traveling as a freelance travel writer, so it was just a part of the gig! Becoming a Happiness Engineer has been a dream come true, and allows me to work in a role I love, without sacrificing my lifestyle or love of travel along the way.

    Working poolside

    Timezones: A constant challenge

    Currently, my team is in the United States, and although I am not, I am in a similar time zone to them. But, as I travel, things change. Most recently, daylight savings threw a spanner in the works and landed with me missing out on a team meeting and double booking a few shifts throughout the week.

    To manage these sorts of situations, it’s become important to understand UTC time, and have a firm grasp on changes happening. Not only those in my own timezone, but also those of my team members.

    I’ve become pretty proficient at knowing my way around timezone apps, as well as estimating time zone conversions in my head.. even for places I’ve never been to!

    My office: Jungle Edition
    Working from anywhere = some of the most beautiful ‘offices’ in the world!

    Planning travel days

    Although all the photos you see of people working by the beach look good, the reality of working on the road isn’t always so glamorous. Sun glare on your screen, unpredictable connections, delays and sand on your keyboard are just the beginning. This is why I plan my travel to only transit on my weekends, and always settle into a stable work environment for my working week. And, as cool as it looks (and it really does look pretty cool!) working from a beach is neither enjoyable nor practical. So sorry to disappoint, but I always try to find myself an office, comfortable Airbnb, or cafe for getting my work done!

    Instead of a traditional weekend, I take Mondays and Tuesdays off. These are great days to either pick up a well-priced flight, get a less crowded train, or enjoy new places without all the weekend hoards. On the weekends, when everything is full, expensive, or closed, I enjoy my working days. Most of my time is spent helping users in live chat, responding to tickets, and working in screen share concierge calls. Weekends are a particularly high demand time in WordPress.com support, so this schedule works well all around.

    I also aim to stop in each destination at least two weeks, but often as much as a few months. This gives me some weekends free of traveling, and much less time spent traversing (and much more time spent enjoying). As an added bonus, AirBnBs usually offer great discounts for stays of a month or more.

    Getting work done by a Nepalese lake
    Working from Cafes often leads to inevitable cake consumption..

    The importance of good internet

    The quality of internet connection is a key factor in my job! And traveling means I don’t always have control of ensuring my internet connection is top notch. This is why I have around a million (I counted) different backup plans.

    I always cross check the internet reviews of across at least two platforms (eg Booking.com AND trip advisor). When I do this, I’m searching for keywords in the reviews such as ‘internet’. If I’m in an Airbnb, I try and check out the super hosts, or the ones signed up for the Airbnb Business Platform. I also ask the hosts to send me a speed test of their internet connection, to make sure I know what I’m heading into.

    On top of all the background checks on my accommodation, I also travel between towns and cities that have at least one co-working space. I don’t generally spend a lot of time at co-working spaces, but it’s always good to know there’s a plan for if things aren’t ideal in the accommodation.

    Self care, self care, self care!

    One of the most unexpected challenges for me in my nomad journey has been self-care – my body in particular! Working from anywhere is an awesome concept, but the reality is that ‘anywhere’ doesn’t guarantee a high-quality workspace, good desks or comfortable chairs. Over time, this has led me to become more vigilant in my self-care. Laptop stands stands and external keyboards have become my saviors. Each destination involves seeking co-working spaces with good quality equipment and locating yoga schools, gyms, and chiropractors before I arrive.

    Living and working as a nomad has its challenges, and the processes involved to plan each day are quite different from those of someone who works from home or an office. But I love my lifestyle, and working for a location independent, fully distributed company makes it all possible for me.

  • A work schedule of flexible predictability

    A work schedule of flexible predictability

    Working remotely at Automattic means you set your own schedule. This does not mean you can decide on a whim when to work and when not to work (sorry, mom). Instead, you have full authority to choose your working hours, as long as you do so with at least 2 weeks notice. This allows us to offer consistent live chat coverage, while still keeping a maximum of flexibility for each individual Happiness Engineer. You can shift your schedule to your liking, just let us know in advance.

    As a part-time single mum of twin toddlers, I take ample advantage of this flexibility. The kids stay with me every other week, and even when they are at my partner’s place, I take them to kindergarten. Hence, there are certain times in the day that I am not available – and these times shift from week to week.

    To make it a bit more visual – this is what my potential work hours are during a week with kids compared to a child-free week. This does NOT mean that I’ll end up working all those hours, it just means that I could.

    Now, let’s add some preferences to this setup: my team is based in UTC+5.5 (India) all the way to UTC (South Africa, Europe). This means I best overlap with my team in my mornings/early afternoon. My peers and other team leads are often based in the US though – so I best overlap with them during my evening hours. This means there is a huge temptation to be working at all times to not miss out on anything.

    To counter this problem, I’ve further divided my week into UTC days and US days. Monday is my “standard day”. Tuesday and Wednesday are my early days and Thursday is my US day. And suddenly every day is different, though across time every (second) MONDAY is the same.

    All my weekly commitments are scheduled within hours that do not change from week to week – so there is a certain core-time where I am always available. However, this mixed schedules allows me to be flexible for other calls (e.g. joining US based team meetings during my child-free week), something that would not be possible if I had to stick to the exact schedule every day.

    Of course, I am absolutely and entirely dependent on my google calendar. I consistently track my time to make sure I don’t accidentally log 14 hours during a child-free day. And I am extremely paranoid about keeping my availability in our chat scheduling tool up-to-date. It’s a small trade-off compared with the quality time I get with my kids (during their week) and with my writing and running (while child-free).

  • So You Want to be a Happiness Engineer, Huh?

    So You Want to be a Happiness Engineer, Huh?

    As I’ve been vocal with my friends, family, and anyone who would listen about my career at Automattic I ended up having a lot of people asking me about what it takes to be a Happiness Engineer and if it is something they could do. Most of the time I would give them a quick description and could usually tell by their reaction if they wanted to hear more. As I’ve written a fair amount on my blog before this about the role, I’d have people contacting me who I didn’t know. Finally, I decided that I’d take my time and write everything out to make sure I had a reasonably complete picture of what it takes that I could share with people.

    Since joining Automattic (and to the annoyance of some people, I’m sure) I tend to go on about how much I enjoy my job and the company itself. I’ve often been asked what it takes and what you need to know to get the job. Especially since I called people to join me in my last post, I thought I would put together my thoughts and some resources which I can point people to or they can hopefully find through searching online as well.

    I’m going to go a bit further and not only talk about what you need to do to get the job, but what I think you need to be successful in the Happiness Engineer role at Automattic. Please note that there are a lot of points here and you don’t have to be an expert in all of them to apply, but having a good understanding from a combination of them would be good.

    Read more…

    Post: https://sandy.mcfadden.blog/2017/06/12/so-you-want-to-be-a-happiness-engineer-huh/

  • Meet a Happiness Engineer: David Cole

    Meet a Happiness Engineer: David Cole

    David Cole, a Happiness Engineer, shares the most challenging parts of his job and his advice for anyone considering applying for a job at Automattic.